The present invention relates to an electrically driven hand-held playback device for non-rotating plate-shaped or sheet-like small sound carriers having a sound recording area in the form of a spiral sound groove and of a diameter of approximately 1 to 2.5 inches, as well as with aligning means for putting it into place in correct positional relationship, and refers also to such a sound carrier. For teaching purposes, and more particularly for self-tutoring, it is often desirable or even necessary to have pictorial representations or text written in a foreign language be supplemented by acoustic information, or printed text in a foreign idiom be pronounced for the student, so as to make deepened knowledge easier to acquire or teach the correct pronounciation. It is known, for this purpose, to use non-rotating sound carriers having a spiral sound groove, which are played using a detachable small sound reproducing apparatus, said apparatus including a revolving pickup for playing back the sound carrier sound groove. This type of sound carrier may be fast with the pages of a book. Such attaching to the book is conveniently done already during the stages of production of the book, unless it is left to be done by the buyer of the book who will then procure himself said sound carriers separately. Such a sound carrier may, for example, be of circular shape or be squared with a rounded-off top part (U.S. Pat. No. 3,702,032). However, it can also be provided on the quaternia of pages made out of foils of plastic material and intended to be inserted into books (U.S. Pat. No. 4,425,098).
Various embodiments are known of sound reproducing apparatuses, of the kind initially referred to, for such non-rotating plate-shaped or sheet-like sound carriers of a diameter of between 4 and 6 centimeters (German patent Nos. 1 301 150 and 21 55 910, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,193,295, 3,224,782 and 3,883,146).
The sound carriers used together with the sound reproducing apparatuses referred to herein, have a playing time of approximately 1 to 4 minutes. The diameter of the outer sound groove is approximately 2 to 4 centimeters.
Especially for sound carriers used in language teaching, it is often desired to repeat the text which is pronounced to the user on the sound carrier not entirely, but only a specific part thereof.
However, these known sound reproducing apparatuses for these small non-rotating sound carriers do not allow for a selection of the text. It is not possible to listen only to the middle or any other part of the text without playing back also the preceding text which it is not desired to listen to. That is so because the pickup cannot be shifted manually as it is possible to do with most conventional record players in which the tone arm can be led by hand to a certain groove or to a position inbetween portions of the sound groove which are separated from each other, mostly by blank grooves. In long-playing records with several music pieces recorded, the portions are usually separated from each other through the provision, in the basically continuous sound groove, of some blank grooves of notably greater pitch than is normal, so that this intermediate zone would be recognizable, the pickup would be able to be set thereon, and also that said zone would be rapidly passed through when playing back.
The fact that the initially described sound reproducing apparatus would not permit selecting a text, accounts for a decrease in value of sound reproducing apparatuses and small, non-rotating sound carriers of the kind referred to when they are used for teaching purposes, particularly in teaching languages.